1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to provisioning and management of secure facilities, and more particularly relates to provisioning and management of automated, remotely monitored secure facilities.
2. Description of Related Art
Historically, safe deposit boxes have been maintained in secure vaults located at local bank branches. Access to these safe deposit boxes has been controlled by manual processes. Typically, access to a safe deposit box requires the participation of at least one staff member of the local bank branch. The bank staff member must approve access to the vault and assist in the opening of the safe deposit boxes within the vault. Typically, the safe deposit boxes have a variety of form-factors and are stored in secure, locked compartments on shelves in the vault.
In a typical situation, a customer rents a safe deposit box from the local bank branch. In many implementations, the safe deposit box has two locks. The customer is issued a key unique to one of the locks, and the bank retains the key to the other lock. Only by using both keys can the safe deposit box can be extracted from its secure storage shelf in the vault for access by the customer.
Because at least one staff member must be present, access to safe deposit boxes is generally restricted to bank opening hours. Because the vault is located at the local bank branch, the customer has limited choice in the geographical location of the safe deposit box. Hence, customer access to safe deposit boxes is subject to severe limitations, and involves significant labor.